The Duchess Of Windsor, page 5
Nothing seemed certain or secure. Wallis was terrified of quiet, of being alone in darkened rooms filled with shadows. Above all, she dreaded the idea of loss, of being abandoned, of having no one left to care for her. “A shivery feeling comes,” Wallis later wrote, “as when on a crisp fall day the sun is momentarily obscured; and the tenuous apprehensions that now assailed me took the form of a dread of being left alone, even for a few hours, as if my mother, too, might vanish.”22
Even with the extra income earned from her clothing, Alice continued to struggle. A year after she moved out of the Warfield house on East Preston Street, she swallowed her pride and accepted an invitation to live with her widowed sister, Bessie Merryman, in her gray-stone house at 9 West Chase Street.
Wallis’s aunt Bessie was to become the third formidable and influential woman in her life. Alice and her sister were utterly unalike in character; whereas Alice was carefree, Bessie was serious. Her concern for young Wallis, as much as sympathy for her sister, had led her to issue the invitation. Wallis adored her mother, but she also longed for the stability which her kind aunt offered. Bessie, in turn, understood Wallis, and the two became inseparable. Wallis came to rely on her aunt’s common sense, a trait notably lacking in her mother. Nor was her influence confined to more practical concerns. Bessie was not yet the matronly figure she was later to become; she cultivated a love of fashionable clothes, elegant surroundings, and the finer things in life, all traits passed along to her impressionable niece. If at times Alice seemed preoccupied with her own pursuits, Bessie more than compensated with a love and affection which helped reassure Wallis.
In 1902, Wallis was sent off to school. Appealing to whatever familial instincts Solomon Davies Warfield possessed, Alice managed to convince him to pay for the education of his brother‘s only child.23 With his money behind her, Alice selected a prestigious private institution on 2812 Elliott Street, run by Miss Ada O’Donnell; her pupils were a mixture of boys and girls drawn from upper-class districts around the school. Wallis did well there, impressing both teachers and fellow students with her wit, energy, and enthusiasm for learning. She became a star pupil, priding herself on her position within the class, and enjoyed the attention and acceptance it brought. Wallis was quickly angered when denied either. Once, when one of her classmates beat her in raising a hand and shouting an answer, she was so incensed that she smacked him over the head with her pencil box.24
Years later, Ada O’Donnell remembered Wallis as “an attractive, lively six-year-old who was full of fun and pep, and was well-liked by all the children.”25 Alice ensured that if Wallis could not have the best of everything, she at least would be immaculate and dressed as well as possible.
In 1906, Wallis left Miss O’Donnell’s. Baltimore possessed several excellent girls’ schools, and both Alice and her daughter fully expected that, whatever their reduced financial circumstances, the scion of the Warfield and Montague families deserved the best. Luckily, Solomon agreed to continue paying the fees, and Alice set about selecting her daughter’s new school. The most fashionable girls’ school, Bryn Mawr, proved too expensive for Solomon’s taste, and so Wallis was forced to settle for Arundell, only slightly less prestigious.
The Arundell School for Girls was an entirely new experience for Wallis, allowing her to meet a wider range of girls, many from distinguished and socially prominent families. The curriculum was a challenge, but Wallis, who was rapidly developing into a scholar, appreciated the difficulty and soon proved more than up to the task. Still, her lingering insecurities—from moving around so much, her fatherless childhood, and the strained relations between her mother and her relatives—took their toll. She was desperate to fit in, to be accepted. When she learned that all of the other girls regularly wore blue or white pleated skirts with white sailor-suit blouses, she quickly begged her mother—who could not afford to purchase the clothes in a regular store—to make them for her. Soon enough, Wallis sported the same fashions as her fellow students, and only her closest friends knew that they were made by her mother.26
Wallis was popular at Arundell. Teachers and classmates alike remembered that she was cheerful without fail, always courteous to others, intelligent, kind, and despite her academic ability, not a show-off. If this sounds too good to be true, it was at least tempered by her appearance, which both Wallis and her mother considered a disappointment. As a baby and young child, she had been engaging; as she grew older, Wallis developed into an angular, almost masculine looking young woman. But her hair was thick and full, and her piercing lavender eyes accentuated the chiseled lines of her face. She took great pride in those aspects of her appearance which she could control: Her dresses were always clean and pressed, her hair was swept back and tied with pretty ribbons or bows, and her shoes were carefully polished. Even if she was not traditionally pretty, at least her clothing and appearance would be above reproach. She also began to develop considerable charm, which she worked to great effect on both her fellow students and her teachers.
Wallis joined nearly all of the teams at Arundell. She did not particularly care for sports but enjoyed being accepted as part of the group. On three afternoons a week, she and the other girls trooped off to a small building at the corner of Charles Street and Mount Vernon Avenue known as the Gymnasium. This was a private establishment run by Miss Charlotte Noland, who would later found the famous Fox-croft School.
Wallis did well at the Gymnasium and managed to play lead positions in several sports.27 Her time there appears to have been happy, although she was not averse to using the odd feigned illness to sit out the more tiring games. Years later, recalling her penchant for suddenly appearing with a sprained ankle, jammed finger, or terrible cramps, Miss Noland declared, “I have never known anyone who could so consistently for so many years so successfully evade the truth.”28
Wallis was a surprisingly diligent student. Each day after school she joined her friends as they played jacks, jump rope, and dolls but was careful to be at her desk every night to do her homework.29 She worked hard at her lessons, determined to remain near the top of her class. She loved English and history but did less well in mathematics, much to the chagrin of her uncle Solomon.30
Although Wallis continued to pay regular visits to her grandmother Warfield and Uncle Sol, her mother—for understandable reasons—did not often accompany her. These occasions were often painful reminders of what Wallis and Alice had left behind: At East Preston Street there were servants and a dozen rooms and shining silver on the dining table. One Sunday evening each month, Wallis had to take her report cards from Arundell and submit them to Solomon for his inspection and approval. Solomon, a man of little imagination, had no taste or understanding of Wallis’s interests or achievements in history or English; a businessman to his very core, he preferred success with practical courses and liked to quiz her with impromptu mathematics questions between mouthfuls of food. Unfortunately for Wallis, Solomon’s stern lectures seldom made much sense, and she invariably gave the wrong answers. One evening, knowing that she was about to face a similar inquisition, Wallis carefully prepared to get the better of her demanding uncle. As he stood up at the head of the table to carve the roast, Wallis, unprompted and unquestioned, shouted out: “The square of the hypotenuse of a right-angled triangle is equal to the sum of the squares of the other two sides. The area of a circle is equal to pi-r squared.” Solomon was so shocked, according to Wallis, that the carving knife fell from his hand and clattered to the table. Then, with a slight smile, he congratulated her and sat down to his dinner, having forgone his usual inquisition for the evening.31
By 1908, Alice’s finances were once again under control, and she was on the move again. This time, she took Wallis and left her sister Bessie’s town house for a suite of rooms in the Preston Apartment House. She had longed for her independence, and this was certainly a step up from the time she had spent at the Brexton Residential Hotel. The Preston Apartment House, just a few blocks down the same street from where the Warfields lived, was a respectable, solidly upper middle class establishment.
But money still ran short on occasion, and Alice improvised. She sometimes temporarily let extra rooms to relatives. This, however, was not Alice’s only financial endeavor. When she discovered that many of her fellow residents regularly dined out, Alice hit upon a new scheme. Since one of her few skills was an ability to cook, she determined that she would utilize this talent to supplement her income. She hired a cook and quickly lined up a dozen residents who agreed to become her paying guests. But Alice never knew how to temper her extravagant tastes with practicality. She cooked prime rib and squab, and served soft-shell crabs, terrapin, and delicate pastries. The guests loved the overwhelming, elaborate dinners; but soon enough the grocers’ bills arrived, and Alice was unable to pay them. Once again, Aunt Bessie stepped in and arranged for her sister’s debts to be settled. Thus ended what, in the words of her daughter Wallis, “had undoubtedly been the finest dining club in Baltimore history.”32
Charles F. Bove, who lived in the apartment block and occasionally dined at Alice’s table, recalled: “I was particularly fascinated by the young girl who helped her mother serve the meals I took with the family. She was an exuberant child of twelve with . . . hair parted in braids, high cheekbones and a prominent nose that made one think of an Indian squaw. I teasingly called her Minnehaha and she responded with a wide grin.”33
One of the stories which would most disturb Wallis in her later life and one she would always vehemently deny was that her mother ran a boardinghouse. These allegations presumably arose from the arrangements at the Preston Apartment House. But as Frances Donaldson has pointed out, “One cannot imagine that Mrs. Warfield had the resources to become ‘the landlady’ of the Preston Apartment House,” nor do any business or title documents bear out this assertion.34
The relationship between mother and daughter was a curious one, rather more like that of sisters than parent and child. Alice continued to indulge Wallis, although as she grew older and the two grew more alike in character, there were often extended battles of will, with each stubbornly refusing to give way. Wallis later recalled being spanked, when she misbehaved, with a heavy silver hairbrush or having her tongue scrubbed with a nailbrush if she swore. Still, Alice doted on her only child; worried that she might somehow inherit her late father’s tuberculosis, Alice insisted that Wallis drink a tumbler of blood squeezed from a raw steak upon her return from school each day.35
Shortly after Wallis began her term at Arundell, Alice managed to move into their first house, at 212 Biddle Street, using money from Solomon. It was a typical Baltimore brownstone, with three floors and a front door reached from the sidewalk by six marble steps. The first floor held a parlor, library, dining room, pantry, and kitchen; Wallis occupied a room on the third floor, while her mother took a large bedroom on the second. Behind this was another bedroom, which Wallis thought was reserved for guests.36 But Alice had something quite different in mind, which was to shock her daughter.
For a number of months, Alice, still young and vibrant at thirty-six, had been quietly seeing a man one year her senior named John Freeman Rasin. Rasin, the eldest son of the head of the Baltimore Democratic Party, Carroll Rasin, was sociable, intelligent, kind, and perhaps most important, wealthy. He had little ambition, a fact borne out by his rather portly figure, and seemed to spend the majority of his time indulging his passion for alcohol and smoking; indeed, Wallis would later recall that he seemed to do little else.37 But he was also very kind both to Alice and her daughter, always showering Wallis with little gifts which did much to endear him to her, including her first pet, a French bulldog called “Bully.” “He had an infectious laugh,” Wallis recalled, “and I had liked him until my mother told me of her intention to marry him.”38
Alice’s decision to remarry was understandable, especially since a union with Rasin promised financial security and freedom from the powerful influence of her brother-in-law and his money. But Wallis felt otherwise. On the verge of enjoying her first real home with her mother, her first taste of independence from relatives and others, her illusions were shattered. She had no wish to share either the house or her mother with a stranger who, however nice he might be, was still an intruder in her world.39
Upon learning of her mother’s intentions, Wallis immediately threatened to run away. Alice pleaded with her stubborn daughter, but the young girl would not give way. She spent hours and hours alone in her room crying, declaring that she would not attend the wedding. Alice, completely overwhelmed, felt helpless and called in her sister Bessie and cousin Lelia Barnett to calm her daughter and try to reason with her. They carefully explained that Alice loved Mr. Rasin and that it was wrong of Wallis to hurt her mother by not attending a ceremony that should be a joyful celebration and would bring Alice much happiness.40
Wallis was stubborn, but she reluctantly agreed that she would watch as her mother wed Mr. Rasin. The wedding took place on June 20, 1908. Shortly before three that afternoon, a number of guests, including members of both the Warfield and Montague families, arrived to witness the small, private wedding that was to take place in the parlor of the house on 212 Biddle Street.
Wallis duly appeared as promised, wearing a gown of embroidered batiste laced with blue ribbons, and watched in silence as her mother and her new stepfather recited their vows. However, halfway through the ceremony, she slipped out of the parlor and disappeared into the adjoining dining room, where the wedding cake stood waiting for the reception. Hidden within its layers were a number of small, symbolic tokens of good luck, including a new dime and a thimble. Whether out of boredom, as a subtle act of vengeance against her mother and new stepfather, or simple childhood curiosity, Wallis reached into the cake with her hands, tearing it apart. As she continued to dig through the layers for the good-luck symbols, the doors to the dining room swung open, and suddenly she was confronted with the quizzical stares of the new Mr. and Mrs. Rasin. For a moment, no one spoke; then, clearly saving what might have turned the day into a disaster, Wallis’s new stepfather stepped forward, held out his arms, and grabbed her, twirling her around in the air and laughing out loud. This act of forgiveness won Wallis over; thereafter, although she refused to call him anything but Mr. Rasin, she made no trouble for her mother and her new husband.41
3
Youth
LIFE AT 212 BIDDLE STREET slowly settled into a quiet, relaxed pattern. Although Wallis became fond of her new stepfather, their relations remained marked with a certain distance and formality. Rasin was a curious, almost-minimal presence within the household; he was always disappearing behind the library doors, where he spent his days reading newspapers and smoking cigarettes. He had no need to work and drew his monthly income from a sizable trust fund.1
Rasin’s money allowed Alice to entertain again, and she filled the rooms of 212 Biddle with attractive new furniture, carpets, and a piano. Alice also tried to provide some of the finer things for her daughter and hired an elderly lady called Miss Jackson to give Wallis piano lessons. Miss Jackson came one afternoon a week and supervised as Wallis sat pounding away at the keyboard. Not surprisingly, the young girl hated these lessons, for she was tone deaf. She begged her mother to be allowed to quit, but Alice refused, and Wallis stuck it out until her first recital. When she had finished, the audience duly applauded; “not exactly an ovation—a kind of gratitude that the thing didn’t last any longer,” Wallis later wrote. This disaster was enough to convince Alice to heed her daughter’s pleas, and Wallis was allowed to stop her lessons.2
Two months before her fourteenth birthday, Wallis was confirmed into the Episcopal church. Neither Alice nor Rasin was particularly religious, but the influence of her grandmother remained strong, and Wallis’s religious instruction was not neglected. Wallis learned her catechism, and on April 17, 1910, dressed in a plain white dress, she joined the rest of her class at an elaborate ceremony held at Christ Church in Baltimore.
With Rasin’s money, Wallis attended the fashionable Burrlands Summer Camp, run by her athletic instructor at Baltimore’s Gymnasium, Miss Charlotte Noland. Her previous summer holidays had always been spent with wealthy Warfield relatives in their country estates outside Baltimore, surroundings in which Wallis inevitably felt very much a poor cousin. Burrlands, therefore, was a welcome relief. Situated deep in the lush countryside near Middleburg, Virginia, Burrlands offered a taste of life in the old South, with its white-columned, Greek-revival plantation house, afternoons spent riding, playing lawn tennis and croquet, and concentration on good manners. Rough edges were polished through elaborate afternoon teas, carefully chaperoned parties, and formal Sunday dinners.
In this environment Wallis blossomed—and developed her first real crush. The object of her affection, Lloyd Tabb, was a handsome seventeen-year-old whose family lived at the nearby Glen Ora estate, which would later be used by John F. Kennedy as a weekend retreat from the White House. Lloyd Tabb was a tall, athletic young man with a passion for football, swimming, and riding. Wallis did not particularly care for such pursuits, but she was canny and managed to quickly endear herself to Lloyd by learning all she could about his tastes and flattering him no end. With Miss Noland’s permission, she visited the Tabb estate, sitting for hours with Lloyd on the veranda, reading aloud from books of poetry or listening (though rarely joining in) as the family sang together.
“Being full of romance and poetry at that age,” Lloyd recalled, “we would maneuver around and find a secluded spot in which to ‘speak of love’ and ‘give the direct gaze.’ “ His impressions form the first real, independent picture of Wallis as a young woman. He recalled “a touch of pathos and sweetness bordering on wistfulness” in her character. “No one who really knew Wallis well ever said anything against her,” he declared. She never acted “silly” around boys, he said.
